11-year-old Miah was in the classroom at a Texas elementary school when the 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers. She called the police with her dead teacher’s cell phone – but they didn’t come to help her, she reports to the US broadcaster CNN.
After the school massacre in Uvalde, one of the surviving children spoke publicly about the attack and his rescue for the first time. Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo tearfully told CNN how she smeared herself with the blood of a dead classmate and pretended to be dead to escape the shooter. She and a classmate then used her killed teacher’s cell phone and called the police to ask them to stop the shooter.
That day, she and her classmates were watching the cartoon “Lilo and Stitch” when teachers Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia found out there was a shooter at school, Miah Cerrillo told CNN in an unfilmed and non-direct way quoted testimony.
One of the teachers tried to close the classroom door, but the shooter was already there. Everything went very quickly. According to Miah Cerrillo, he looked at the teacher and said, “Good night.” Then he shot her and aimed at her colleague and some students. Miah Cerrillo was injured in the shoulder and head by shrapnel.
After that, the student continued, the shooter opened a door to a second classroom. She heard shots and screams. The shooter turned on music through speakers – sad music, according to Miah Cerrillo.
Using the dead teacher’s phone, the girl and a friend begged the police to intervene: “Come in please, we have a problem.” Fearing the shooter might return to her class, she said she dipped her hands in the blood of one classmate whose corpse was lying next to her to smear himself with and pretend to be dead.
At that point, the 11-year-old assumed the police hadn’t arrived at the scene. Later, she recalled to the US TV network, she heard the police arrive outside. She doesn’t understand why the police didn’t come to save her, she told CNN, crying.
For example, it became known that 19 police officers had been stationed in the corridor in front of the interconnected classrooms at an early stage, in which the shooter had holed up with the children. After more than 45 minutes, they made no attempts to enter the room and stop the shooter.
The girl’s hair has been falling out since that horrible day at school. Miah’s mother, Abigale Veloz, set up a fundraising website to fund the medical and psychological help her daughter needs after the massacre. “She will need a lot of help to cope with the trauma she is going through,” Veloz wrote. By Friday afternoon, more than $270,000 had been raised. This far exceeded the original goal of $10,000.
